When I launched this blog in 2012, I was passionate about blogging. At that time, I still believed in the power of words—that words truly mattered. I no longer hold that as a truth.

Back in 1995, after coming to the end of another job and place of employment, I took the summer off. I read, I ruminated, and I planted a garden. There was a particular richness to that brief respite from work and busyness.

In many ways, that summer changed my life at the time. I made a transition in my thinking and outlook. I also read Neil Postman for the first time. What Postman taught me about the world is something I’ve carried with me ever since, especially in terms of how I view technology.

In 1995, there was no Facebook. News and presidents didn’t take to Twitter to make proclamations. I would not learn of the internet for another year. It was the perfect time to come to Postman’s ideas and live amidst the wreckage across the following 25 years, watching a world altered by technology.

Unlike 2012 when I’d spend copious amounts of time researching and organizing my thoughts in order to write a lengthy post that would ultimately be read by very few, these days, I simply present some truncation of a greater truth, or the more detailed ideal that I am working from. I am reading less these days than I did in 1995, but I still read. I’m probably reading and writing less because I’m playing guitar more. Since words matter no more that’s a worthwhile trade.

I don’t believe science and technology will save us, greatly improve our lives, or bring about anything particularly special to how we currently live. That thinking comes from internalizing Postman 25 years ago.

Here is Postman on technology, in five points:

One, we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price.

Two, there are always winners and losers—the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners

Three, embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes the bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on.

Four, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates (or Jeff Bezos).

Five, technology tends to become mythic; i.e. perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us. …. When a technology become mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control. Continue reading →